At first, everything went perfectly.

Emilia had never really had a problem with maneuvering hordes of monsters. She'd had to do it all the time when she served Kronos and even after that, she was constantly surrounded by questionable creatures. In Tartarus, she'd made herself invisible and walked through armies like it was nothing before she faced the god himself.

There were hundreds of ogres, Earthborn, and Cyclopes milling through the ruins, and they all allowed Emilia and Percy to pass by without question. The majority of the monsters were gathered at the Parthenon, watching the ceremony in progress. It wasn't suspicious for them to be moving through the crowd.

They split the onagers in the center, each diving toward one. Emilia didn't even need to brandish Incubo very much to kill the monsters guarding them. The Earthborn that'd been near her assigned onager were not paying attention and with one quick swipe of dark energy, she drew them into the tip of the spear and then worked to cut the onager's spring cord, disabling the weapon.

Percy had done his side, too. They gave each other a discrete thumbs-up before moving forward, to the next pair of onagers. The second one Emilia had to deal with was guarded by a Laistrygonian. She removed from her pocket a vial of Greek fire that Leo had given each of them– she couldn't afford to cut down this larger ogre but at least with the Greek fire in the sling, the catapult would explode upon loading and would be rendered useless.

Overhead, gryphons were roosted on the colonnade of an old temple. Further in the front, a group of empousai had retreated into a shadowy archway and appeared to be slumbering, their fiery hari flickering dimly, their brass legs glinting. With any luck, the scorching sun would make them sluggish in a fight.

Any monsters that were small and isolated were easy to cut down. The less there were to deal with, the better. Emilia offered each one as a sacrifice to her mother. Here, one Earthborn soul for you. Now the runt of the ogre pack. This telekhine will do nicely.

She wouldn't forget, would she? She wouldn't be... unprepared? Eris knew what was coming, she could probably sense that they were in Athens. She would hear Emilia's prayers.

Only now did Emilia wonder if her mother would actually be able to face all the pain she caused, all the suffering that she could confront to create a bridge for herself over the Acheron. What if she wasn't strong enough? What if Emilia hadn't given her the attention she needed to make it happen? Would Eris reconsider her position? Reconsider wanting to know her daughter?

The crowd at the Parthenon was growing larger, and the chanting was growing louder. Ahead, she could only make out the heads of twenty or thirty giants standing in a circle, mumbling and swaying in a strange ritualistic manner. She focused on the buzzing she kept hearing overhead, Frank monitoring how much progress they'd made. She and Percy had each disabled a third siege weapon by this point, using their blades to saw through torsion ropes, so it was likely that Annabeth and Piper had reached the same point and soon the Argo II could approach clear from the North.

Suddenly, the chanting stopped. A BOOM! echoed across the hillside. In the Parthenon, the giants roared in triumph. The monsters surged towards the sound of celebration, which probably wasn't a good sign. Emilia lost sight of Percy as she blended into a crowd of sour-smelling Earthborn, following them as they bounded up the main steps of the temple.

She'd been about to climb onto a section of metal scaffolding to get a good view overhead when someone plucked her straight up. Her disguise melted away as she looked up at Enceladus, who had her in one fist and Percy in the other.

"Too predictable," he sneered gleefully. He squeezed so hard, Emilia's arms were flattened against her body, making it difficult for her to move them and send an arc of shadows into his face.

The giant moved toward the throne, where dozens of giants stood in a loose ring, hollering and shaking their weapons as the princess Periboia held Annabeth by the neck like a feral cat. The cheers rose as Enceladus lifted his fists, revealing Percy and Emilia flailing and struggling to breathe.

King Porphyrion's white eyes gleamed with malice. "Right on time! The blood of Olympus to raise the Earth Mother!"

Mother! pleaded Emilia. Mother, it's time, I need you– I need your help!

She gave a weak hiccup as Enceladus shook her like a rag doll, her teeth chattering. Porphyrion rose to his full height, almost as tall as the temple columns. His face was just as Emilia remembered– green as bile, with a twisted sneer, his seaweed-coloured hair braided with swords and axes from dead demigods.

"They arrived just as you foresaw, Enceladus," he praised. "Well done."

Enceladus bowed his head, braided bones clattering in his dreadlocks. "It was simple, my king." Emilia looked over at Percy, wondering if they could coordinate some sort of attack. It was hopeless. They'd both been caught off-guard and were no physical match against the giant's strength, not without enough room to move their arms.

Emilia regretted not having practiced moving shadows without using her hands– she never thought it would be a problem. Her fingers helped her form the shapes, the tendrils that burned and cut. Even if she wanted to try sowing despair in Enceladus, how much could she do without winding her hands? She'd always practiced it that way. Always.

"I knew these three would lead the assault," continued Enceladus. "I understand how they think. Athena and Poseidon– they were just like these children. They both came here thinking to claim this city. Their arrogance has undone them!" He shook Percy even harder. "And the girl who kept you asleep, Porphyrion... she is constantly by their side, so filled with hubris because she believes she stood firm against our father. The Earth Mother knew she had to be here... and so she would be, of her own choice."

The only one that could do anything now was Piper. They hadn't expected her to be there and that was their advantage. Where she was, Emilia didn't know.

Porphyrion leaned over Emilia. "A child who believed she was a match for the King of the Giants. A match for Tartarus himself. You are strong, Child of Darkness, yet you still failed." He gripped her face with his fingers, hard enough that she let out a whimper, feeling her teeth were about to chip off onto her tongue. "Just as you failed the Lord Kronos. Soon, we won't need you anymore."

Annabeth tried to say something in retaliation, but the giantess Periboia shook her by the neck. "Shut up! None of your silver-tongued trickery!" The princess drew a hunting knife as long as a sword. "Let me do the honors, Father!"

"Wait, Daughter." The king stepped back. "The sacrifice must be done properly. Thoon, destroyer of the Fates, come forward!"

The wizened grey giant shuffled into sight, holding an oversized meat cleaver. He fixed his milky eyes on Annabeth. Percy shouted. At the other end of the Acropolis, a hundred yards away, a geyser of water shot into the sky.

King Porphyrion laughed. "You'll have to do better than that, son of Poseidon. The earth is too powerful here. Even your father wouldn't be able to summon more than a salty spring. But never fear. The only liquid we require from you is your blood!"

Thoon knelt and touched the blade of his cleaver reverently against the earth. "Mother Gaea..." His voice was impossibly deep, shaking the ruins. "In ancient times, blood mixed with your soil to create life. Now, let the blood of these demigods return the favor. We bring you to full wakefulness. We greet you as our eternal mistress!"

She was worried that he would come to her first, spilling her blood to begin the transfer. She'd braced herself when, out of nowhere, one of the monsters leapt from the scaffolding, sailing over the heads of the Cyclopes and ogres, landing in the center of the courtyard and pushing toward the giants.

Piper.

As Thoon rose to use his cleaver, Piper slashed upward with her sword, taking off Thoon's hand at the wrist. The old giant wailed. The cleaver and severed hand lay in the dust at Piper's feet as her disguise burnt away.

"WHAT IS THIS?" thundered Porphyrion. "How dare this weak, useless creature interrupt?"

She didn't answer him. She launched her attack immediately, completely alone against a horde of giants. She threw Katoptris at Enceladus, hitting his wrist and making him loosen his grip on Emilia, who scrambled out of his hand and ripped out the knife to stab it into his forehead,effectively freeing both herself and Percy.

She leapt off of Enceladus and summoned every last bit of darkness she could, flinging it all out like a tornado at the monsters who tried to rush at them. At the same time, Piper was weaving through the crowd on the other end, jabbing her sword and yelling, "RUN! RUN AWAY!" to sow confusion.

With every movement of her hand, Emilia imagined a pit of darkness opening within each monster. Confusion wasn't enough– they needed to feel pain, anger, despair, hopelessness. She made it all happen, she made them turn on each other and do the work for them.

"NO!" shouted Porphryion. "STOP THEM! KILL THEM!"

As Piper ran away and the monsters began to disperse, Percy gathered his bearings and started beating the monsters by Periboia back to clear a path toward Annabeth. The girls turned their attention to Annabeth thinking they could free her while Percy held the monsters off, but the giantess Periboia seemed to anticipate their plan.

"I think not, demigods!" yelled Periboia. She raised her knife.

Piper screamed in charmspeak, "MISS!" Just as Emilia made a cushion of shadows for Annabeth and Annabeth kicked her legs up to make herself a smaller target. Periboia's knife passed between Annabeth's legs and stabbed the giantess's own palm.

Periboia cried out in pain and dropped Annabeth– who was alive but not unscathed. The dagger had sliced a nasty gash across the back of her thigh. As Annabeth rolled away, her blood soaked into the earth.

Piper lunged at the giantess as Emilia rushed to help Annabeth, quickly swiping the shadows over the wound to close it. The damage was done, but at least she wouldn't continue to bleed out. "Can you stand?" cried Emilia, ready to yank Annabeth up.

"I think so!" Emilia gave a harsh tug and lifted her to her feet as Piper pierced Periboia's gut with her Boread sword. The giantess toppled backwards, steaming white and frozen solid. She hit the ground with a large thud.

"My daughter!" King Porphyrion leveled his spear and charged.

Percy leapt at him first. He grabbed the tip of Porphyrion's spear and forced it down into the ground. The giant's own momentum lifted him off his feet in an unintentional pole-vault maneuver and flipped him onto his back. Emilia handed Annabeth off to Piper, focusing the shadows back onto the other giants and monsters to give Percy his space to deal with Porphyrion.

Forty feet away, Percy was trying to retrieve a sword from Porphyrion's hair to use as a weapon. But Porphyrion wasn't as stunned as he let on. "Fools!" He backhanded Percy like a pesky fly. The son of Poseidon flew into a column with a sickening crunch.

Porphyrion rose. "These demigods cannot kill us! They do not have the help of the gods. Remember who you are!"

Emilia backed into Piper and Annabeth, the giants closing in with their spears pointed at Piper's chest. Nearby, the pie of Annabeth's blood was bubbling and turning gold.

"Come on, then!" yelled Piper in a challenge as Incubo materialized in Emilia's hand. Annabeth looked a little green, but she had Periboia's hunting knife and was ready to join them. "We'll destroy you ourselves if we have to!"

A metallic smell of storm filled the air. All the hairs on Emilia's arm stood up. "The thing is," said a voice from above, "you don't have to."

At the top of the nearest colonnade stood Jason, his sword gleaming gold in the sun. Frank stood at his side, his bow ready. Hazel sat astride Arion, who reared and whinnied in challenge. With a deafening blast, a white-hot bolt arced from the sky, straight through Jason's body as he leaped, wreathed in lightning, at the giant king.

Jason fell on King Porphyrion with such force that the giant crumpled to his knees– blasted with lightning and stabbed in the neck with a golden gladius. Frank unleashed a hail of arrows, driving back the giants nearest to Percy and giving Emilia room to sprint to him and offer backup.

The Argo II rose above the ruins and all the ballistae and catapults fired simultaneously. Leo must have programmed the weapons with surgical precision. A wall of Greek fire roared upward all around the Parthenon. It didn't touch the interior, but in a flash most of the smaller monsters around it were incinerated.

Leo's voice boomed over the loudspeaker: "SURRENDER! YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY ONE SPANKING HOT WAR MACHINE!"

The giant Enceladus howled in outrage. "Valdez!"

"WHAT'S UP, ENCHILADAS?" Leo's voice roared back. "NICE DAGGER IN YOUR FOREHEAD."

"GAH!" The giant pulled Katoptris out of his head. "Monsters: destroy that ship!"

The remaining forces tried their best. A flock of gryphons rose to attack. Festus the figurehead blew flames and chargrilled them out of the sky. A few Earthborn launched a volley of rocks, but from the sides of the hull a dozen Archimedes spheres sprayed out, intercepting the boulders and blasting them to dust.

Hazel spurred Arion off the colonnade and they leaped into battle. The forty-foot fall would have broken any other horse's legs, but Arion hit the ground running. Hazel zipped from giant to giant, stinging them with the blade of her spatha.

With extremely bad timing, Kekrops and his snake people chose that moment to join the fight. In four or five places around the ruins, the ground turned to green goo and armed gemini burst forth, Kekrops himself in the lead.

"Kill the demigods!" he hissed. "Kill the tricksters!"

Before many of his warriors could follow, Hazel pointed her blade at the nearest tunnel. The ground rumbled. All the gooey membranes popped and the tunnels collapsed, billowing plumes of dust. Kekrops looked around at his army, now reduced to six guys. "SLITHER AWAY!" he ordered.

Frank's arrows cut them down as they tried to retreat. The giantess Periboia had thawed with alarming speed. She tried to grab Annabeth, but, despite her not-fully-healed leg, Annabeth was holding her own. She stabbed at the giantess with her own hunting knife and led her in a deadly game of tag around the throne.

Emilia had reached Percy, pulling him up as he reached into his pocket, finding Riptide had returned to his hand. The two of them were left standing alone against the old giant Thoon, who had reattached his hand and found his meat cleaver.

Everything was going perfectly fine, for a solid few minutes. Emilia flung bolts of dark energy at Thoon as she and Percy advanced. Nearby, Piper and Jason were fighting back-to-back. There was progress all around and it seemed they were diminishing the pool of monsters enough to guarantee a swift victory.

Then everything started going wrong. The element of surprise faded. The giants overcame their confusion. Frank ran out of arrows. He changed into a rhinoceros and leaped into battle, but as fast as he could knock down the giants they got up again. Their wounds seemed to be healing faster.

Annabeth lost ground against Periboia. Hazel was knocked out of her saddle at sixty miles an hour. Thoon's meat cleaver broke the ground in front of Emilia and made her land so hard on her kneecaps that she felt a jolt of pain shoot from head to toe. Jason summoned another lightning strike, but this time Porphyrion simply deflected it off the tip of his spear. The giants were bigger, stronger and more numerous. They couldn't be killed without the help of the gods. And they didn't seem to be tiring.

Mother, thought Emilia as she struggled to get back to her feet, legs burning and trembling. Mother, where are you?

The seven demigods were forced into a defensive ring. Percy was barely managing to keep Emilia on her feet, and even then she was swaying. Another volley of Earthborn rocks hit the Argo II. This time Leo couldn't return fire fast enough. Rows of oars were sheared off. The ship shuddered and tilted in the sky.

Then Enceladus threw his fiery spear. It pierced the ship's hull and exploded inside, sending spouts of fire through the oar openings. An ominous black cloud billowed from the deck. The Argo II began to sink.

"LEO!" screamed Emilia, staggering forward. There was nothing she could do.

Porphyrion laughed. "You demigods have learned nothing. There are no gods to aid you. We need only one more thing from you to make our victory complete." The giant king smiled expectantly. He seemed to be looking at Percy Jackson.

"Percy, look out!" cried Piper, too late.

Emilia looked up at Percy, a single drop trickling down from his nose to his chin, hitting the ground and sizzling like water on a frying pan before anyone could stop it.

The blood of Olympus watered the ancient stones. The Acropolis groaned and shifted as the Earth Mother woke.

Too late, my little pawn.

Emilia couldn't tell if the pain in her legs was getting worse. Her kneecaps felt like they'd been rubbed with sandpaper and lit on fire. She leaned onto Percy, who had plugged up his nose, a sensation of nausea washing over her.

All of this could have been different, had you made another choice. But now, I have no need for you anymore.

She coughed. Twice. A pressure built in her chest until at last she coughed into her hand the third time, a wad of dark liquid spat into her palm– not quite blood. It was too dark, too... shadow-like.

"Emilia," said Piper, terrified. "Emilia, what's going on?"

She couldn't have said anything even if she wanted to. She fell to the ground, wheezing and feeling more of the black goo exiting her body. Her fingertips pressed into the earth below, tendrils shooting out of them against her will, like the shadows were abandoning her.

Go to sleep, little girl. Your darkness returns to me. I made you and I decide when your time in this world is up. I have my own anchor now. You could have been my strongest soldier. Instead, you will fuel my return. You will close the circle I created and give me my permanent foothold. Say goodbye to this world, Emilia Gonzalez. Be grateful I gave you a chance to see it... because you will never see the light of day again.

Her friends were screaming but she could scarcely hear them. She began to gasp for air, falling to the side and staring up at the sky, which was glowing brighter and brighter. "EMILIA!" She wasn't sure who was yelling– was it Leo? Piper? Jason? Annabeth? Percy? Hazel? Frank?

She couldn't respond to them. She could barely see them. She felt life slipping away, she felt the darkness leaving her body and simultaneously suffocating her. This was the end. Shadows were seeping back into the earth, calling her back into her home. She was meant to be in Tartarus, not in this world. By force, she was being returned to the Mansion of Night.

"When the time comes," Thanatos had advised, "do not be afraid."

"Darkness swirls within you," Asclepius had observed, "it keeps you healthy. I cannot see what is to come if that will continue sustaining you."

Her strength left her. She stopped fighting. In her head she apologized to her aunt, to her father, her siblings, to Pollux, to Hylla, to everyone she wasn't making it back to. She tried. She tried so hard.

Will had once told her that if she wanted to get better, she had to have a goal. She'd imagined herself achieving redemption, becoming a hero. Had she reached that point? Was death going to bring her peace? Would she reach Elysium? Would everyone be alright?

The brightness in the sky became too much to tolerate. It was as if her body knew that, because suddenly, all she saw was black. It became a respite. She tried to relax, tried to steady her breathing. Everything would be okay. Her friends would live even if she didn't.

She gave a shaky breath, accepting her death.

Then the ground exploded around them. The darkness faded from her eyes and she saw a slick stream of it rushing toward her, surrounding her and filling her lungs with air. Her body was lifted on its own, until she stood energized with her spear in hand, seeing that the sky and the ground had created an orb of light in the center, making right for the giants.

The gods had arrived.